Overview

This document describes the Google Analytics Real Time Reporting API. For a detailed reference of the API, read the API Reference.

Introduction

The Real Time Reporting API enables you to request real time data—for example, real time activity on your property—for an authenticated user.

You can use the Real Time Reporting API to:

  • Display active viewers of a page and create a sense of urgency for users looking at an item with finite inventory.
  • Display the most popular content such as the top 10 active pages.
  • Create and display a real time dashboard.

Google Analytics superProxy

Use Google Analytics superProxy to handle many of the implementation details of working with Google Analytics APIs on authentication, caching, and transforming API responses to formats used directly with visualization and chart libraries.

Conceptual Overview

The fundamental concepts underlying the Real Time Reporting API are:

  • How reports relate to users and views (profiles).
  • The structure of a report and how to build queries.
  • Working with the API response.

Reports, Users, and Views (Profiles)

Before users are able to use your application to request their report data from a view (profile), you must:

  1. Enable the Google Analytics API.
  2. Create credentials for your application to access the API.
  3. Put the credentials into your application.

When using your application to request their report data, users need to authorize it to access the data on their behalf.

A view (profile) is identified by a View (Profile) ID. Views (profiles), among other entities, are part of the Google Analytics hierarchy of accounts, users, properties, and views. Your application can use the Management API to traverse this hierarchy and obtain a view (profile).

Querying for Dimensions and Metrics

You query the API for Google Analytics report data, which consists of dimensions and metrics. Metrics are the individual measurements of user activity like the number of active users on the property right now. Dimensions break down metrics across some common criteria such as traffic sources, geo location, page information, etc.

Use the Dimensions & Metrics Reference Guide to explore all the dimensions and metrics [exposed through] available to the API. Also, read the Real Time Reporting API Reference Guide to learn how to specify dimensions and metrics in an API query.

Working with Reports

The data returned from the API can be thought of as a table with a header and a list of rows. Each API response consists of a header that describes the name and data type of each column. The response also contains a list of rows, where each row is a list of cells with data in the same order as the headers. Read the Real Time Reporting API Reference Guide for more information about the API response.

Quota Policy

The Real Time Reporting API handles millions of data query operations. We employ a quota system to protect the system from receiving more operations than it can handle, and to ensure an equitable distribution of system resources. Read the Limits and Quota guide for more details.

Next Steps

Now that you understand how the API works, to get started: